The present invention relates to ice-making machines, and more particularly to an apparatus for making flakes of ice especially suited for making flakes of ice from salt water.
Ice-making machines for making flakes of ice are, per se, known. Further, flake ice-making machines for making flakes of ice from salt water are also, per se, known.
Flake ice machines have numerous industrial applications. For example, a typical industrial application for flake ice-making machines for making flakes of ice (or flaked ice) from salt water is in the fishing industry. Such flake ice-making machines are installed on commercial fishing boats to make flaked ice of sea water for refrigerating the fish catch in the holding tanks of the fishing boat.
There are numerous drawbacks with the heretofore known flake ice-making machines. For example, in the known flake ice-making machines having cylindrical refrigerant evaporators, the cylindrical evaporators are fabricated of a continuously spiraled or coiled refrigerant conduit with adjacent turns of the coiled conduit in contact and continuously welded together. The cylindrical bore surface of the coiled conduit must be machined to a smooth surface to provide a cylindrical ice-forming surface. This construction is very expensive to manufacture and is prone to defects.
Further, the spiraled or continuously-coiled refrigerant conduit of the cylindrical evaporator defines a very long refrigerant flow path through the evaporator.
Another drawback with the heretofore known flake ice-making machines is that the operation of the water distributor devices for supplying water to be frozen to the cylindrical evaporator is adversely effected by a change in orientation experienced by a tilting of the ice-making machine. This drawback is particularly troublesome when the flake ice-making machine is installed on a boat.